 Three years ago we lost some grass that got sold out from under us And it was pretty close and very good grass. I was about ready to dump about 75 pair. It was early April Had an old egg teacher of mine who called one day and he said I have some grass available We can run about 200 pair and that's like I said way more than what I had but He had been running to a cousin of mine and he said if you're open to it Would you be willing to run your cows with my cousin who's very good operator very good cattle does things the right way? And I said absolutely So it was a little bit different It was up east of Watertown and it was way further away than then we run cattle normally 10 miles or closer so that was kind of a big change but You know, there's not too many opportunities where you can have cattle 120 miles away and trust the guy to care for your cattle and do a good job doing and this was a case where I didn't think twice about it So that kind of opened my eyes, you know, we were running 200 head together Open my eyes to yeah, we can run bowls together and run cows together We had run kind of similar style cattle all black Angus and trusted each other genetics and bowls and and it works very very good The only issue it was maybe just a little too far away from home So the next year rolled around and an opportunity for some grass came up a lot closer to home Neighbor was I knew he'd been getting out of his cows and called them in April again very late and just guessing for sure that this this grass was going to be gone and He said no it's still available. I had several guys interested but haven't been real interested in in the guys that You know were asking me about it. He said when do you want to come over? So me and Dave came over the next day and again, it was a pretty good chunk of ground and I I knew that I wouldn't have enough cattle to fulfill this amount of grass So that's where Dave came in one of my better friends and the guy that that runs the same style of cattle and Does things the same way we do and that was after running that group in water town It it really wasn't even worth thinking about, you know, whether that could be done or not we approached the landowner And told them that if we were given the opportunity to rent the land that we would rotational graze on it And they actually took us up on that. We actually underbid some fellow ranchers But we offered a rotational graze and they thought that would be a better deal for everybody in the long run Tyler and Dave's rotational grazing practice, I guess is what what you'd call what they're doing Really fits my needs. And so it was a real lucky thing that that I knew Tyler and new Tyler's family and when he approached me with the plan to kind of implement this Rotational grazing program. I was really excited. It was something I've been looking for And so I hope we're kind of at the beginning of this project and and I hope that long term It accomplishes a couple goals one is to make this piece of native pasture out here healthier And two I hope that Tyler's able to make some money out here and and put his kids through college with that So we're kind of balancing those two needs and so far it looks good It's a pretty intense deal we run We have 12 paddocks on that piece we picked up last year and then This year we picked up another good chunk of grass. So I guess the benefits are there's a lot of moving You know a big group of cows. So we need extra bodies Another benefit is spraying We do a lot of spots spraying and cover a lot of ground with two guys Maintaining fences spraying the moving the cattle it's There's a lot of working and moving cows That's it's one of them deals when you set it in motion that moving cows You don't stop because it's it's a weekend and you know your wife wants to go on the trip You're moving them cows before you're doing stuff like that. I guess It is unique and we do have differing ideas every once in a while we butt heads every once in a while because I would say we're probably a little bit more like brothers than we are friends at most of time. So When he thinks sometimes that we should be moving, I think maybe we ought to leave him another half a day and I don't know it always tends to work out pretty well. I guess it's This is our second year doing it together. So we're uh, we're learning how to do it just a little bit better And everything's going pretty smooth Last year we ran 100 head together and this year we Came upon some some more grass another opportunity We were also approached by the landowner because of our rotational grazing practices And we're running 180 pair together right now. So it's we just about doubled what we're doing together it's pretty uh Time intensive I would say at certain times because a lot of times we're doing like the first pastries of grass We did every two days So when you're trying to cut hay and spray crops and stuff like that and you got to move cows every two days It's uh, it can be a handful, but I think it's going to be very beneficial in the long run The partnership that that dave and tyler have been able to create on their operation here these last couple years It reminds me a lot of the west river grazing coalitions and and the different grazing partnerships that they have west river that we see a lot It's basically two local landowners neither one of which Wanted to expand their operation or couldn't expand their operation on their own They just didn't have the human resources or the facilities to pull it off. And so in order to expand their ranch capacity They partnered together. They pulled their resources and it's working out fantastic. They're running larger herds of cows But they can work collectively They have twice the manpower twice their resources to actually move those cattle and pull off that type of a system You know getting at partnership. It's not just one-minded You are going to be better when you have more than one voice You're going to have more ideas and more ways to do things and the challenge of course is is Sorting those out to what's going to be The best thing for that moment in doing that But it's a lot better to have more than one thought process when it comes to doing these things